The committee described Walcott's verse as "melodious and sensitive," recognizing him "for a poetic oeuvre of great luminosity, sustained by a historical vision, the outcome of a multicultural commitment."

The news of his death prompted mourning on social media and in his home of St. Lucia.

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"Everything dies from its desire,even the fireflies, even the shuttering eyes of a loved wife."-Derek Walcott #FSGPoetry

Western canon and Island influences

The Poetry Foundation, in a capsule biography, said Walcott's work resonated with "Western canon and Island influences, sometimes even shifting between Caribbean patois and English, and often addressing his English and West Indian ancestry."

His much-lauded epic poem was "Omeros," which the foundation bio called a "reimagining" of "the Trojan War as a Caribbean fisherman's fight."

"This is a work of incomparable ambitiousness," the Nobel committee said of the 1990 poem.

The arts fraternity, Saint Lucia and the world has lost one of its noted literary icons, Sir Derek Walcott. He... https://t.co/0oJijCF5BA

The Cultural Development Foundation of St. Lucia said family and friends were with Walcott when he died and called him a "true son" of the island nation.

"He was very vocal about the island's culture and heritage and its preservation and his love for Saint Lucia and the Caribbean was evident in his numerous mentions of 'home' in his work," the foundation said.

Walcott self-published his first book, "25 Poems," when he was 18, it said.

Other works included "Three Plays: The Last Carnival; Beef, No Chicken and a Branch of the Blue Nile" (1969)," Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays" (1970), "The Joker of Seville and O Babylon!" (1978), "Remembrance and Pantomime" (1980), "The Isle Is Full of Noises" (1982) and "The Odyssey: A Stage Version" (1992).

"But also the country that I was coming from, the island I was in, hadn't been written about, really. So I felt that I virtually had it all to myself, including the language that was spoken there, which was a French Creole, and a landscape that was not recorded, really. And a people. So it was a tremendous privilege to want to record all of that," he said.